Real World processor improvements rendering?

tunesmith1801 wrote on 11/20/2010, 5:48 AM
I am using a P4 3.4 now with 4gb of ram. I render 1-2 hr movies of events at our school. Some have several effects and transitions. I want to upgrade to a faster computer to try and cut rendering times,

Will I honesty see a good improvement in rendering times going with a faster processor?

Will a i3 render slower than a i7, in other words, is there a point where the bang for your buck becomes an issue.

Thanks - Jim

Comments

PerroneFord wrote on 11/20/2010, 6:31 AM
The faster the processor, the faster the rendering. I believe the gain is linear. A move from a p4 to an i7 is going to be a MASSIVE increase in rendering. My jump from a P4 to a 8 core non i7 showed a MASSIVE gain in speed.
rs170a wrote on 11/20/2010, 6:50 AM
Go for the fastest processor you can afford.
When I made the jump from my P4 3.4 to a quad core, I saw a huge decrease in render times.
For example, a 10 minute video that was very FX heavy went from 3 hr. to 27 min.
With an i7, that would be even faster.

Mike
LSHorwitz wrote on 11/20/2010, 7:50 AM
As others have said, the speed up from an old Pentium 4 to a newer quadcore or 6 core will be absolutely huge. If you want to get a better idea of how fast various computers actually do render in Vegas, you might want to review the thread for Rendertest2010, a long compilation and database of forum people and their experience.

This should give you a good idea of what different i3,i5,i7, Xeon, and AMD processors are achieving. You can run the test on your machine in a few minutes so that you will have an idea what the actually multiplier will be.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=735254

Hope this helps,

Larry

tunesmith1801 wrote on 11/20/2010, 9:35 AM
Ran the render test and it took my computer 40 min to perform the test. i7's were consistently running the test in 2-3 minutes .

Wow upgrading can save huge amounts of time.
kkolbo wrote on 11/20/2010, 10:49 AM
Imagine you 40 minute render taking only 1:42. That is what my system just clocked.

Vegas Pro is all about the processor and bus speed. Oh, and memory helps too. A P4 system is what I came off of. Even a Core 2 Duo system will cut your times in half or better.

Vegas is also optimized for multi-threaded execution. That means choose more threads. AMD processors with 4 cores will not execute renders as fast as the same clock speed 4 core Intel with Hyperthreading. The hyperthreaded CPU will act like 8 cores although not quite executing as fast as an 8 core would.

Clock speed of the processor will also make a big difference.
LSHorwitz wrote on 11/20/2010, 11:34 AM
Glad to see that my suggestion paid off. You could get a 20X or better speed-up if your wallet permits...... I wanted to add one other important suggestion:

Windows 64 bit seems to provide a significant benefit over 32 bit, at least for my own computer, running Windows 7 Home, perhaps 50% better rendering speed. I suggest you strongly consider running the 64 bit version of Windows 7 with Vegas if you have a choice rather than 32 bit, unless you have some other issues (such as driver incompatibilities) which may force you to stick with 32 bit Windows.

I believe other people have found the same benefit I am referring to if they compare the same hardware and Vegas software on 64 bit versus 32 bit Windows 7.

Hope this helps,

Larry